How Trail Tree trails are made, what is measured and what is not, where the places come from, and what it means when a trail page says something was checked. Every trail page carries a "How we know" section built from the same facts.
Trail Tree trails come into being in three ways, and each trail page says which.
Created by a member. Most trails are drawn by a Trail Tree member in the trail builder. The member draws the route on the map, places the stops, writes the description and chooses the tags. The member is responsible for the words, and the page says when the trail was created.
Built by Trail Tree with its AI trail builder. Some trails are assembled by Trail Tree from mapped places: the builder picks a set of places around a theme, routes a walk between them and drafts a description, which a Trail Tree administrator reviews before the trail is published. The page says so.
Adapted from a published document. A small number of trails are imported from a brochure or map that a council or another organisation has published, with the licence recorded against the trail. The page names the publisher.
Distance is measured along the drawn route, in kilometres, to one decimal place. It is the route as drawn, not a GPS track of a walk.
Climb is taken from a terrain model. In Queensland, where the state's one-metre bare-earth survey covers at least 95% of a route, we use that survey and show the total climb and the steepest grade. Everywhere else, and on Queensland routes the survey does not cover well enough, we use a general terrain model that reads tree canopy and rooftops as ground. On those trails we show the total climb but not a steepest figure, because the model cannot be trusted for it. Each trail page says which model was used, when it was sampled, and, in Queensland, how much of the route the survey covered.
Walking time is the walking time along the route at an ordinary pace, worked out from the route when the trail is saved. It is moving time: it does not include time spent at stops.
Descriptions are written either by the trail's creator, or with AI assistance from the route and the stops and then reviewed by the person who saved the trail, or adapted from the published document the trail came from. Each page says which, and the date the description was last saved against the route.
Stops are either placed by hand by the trail's creator or chosen from mapped places. The mapped places come from Overture Maps and from open government data, under their licences, and each trail page gives the count of each. Place details shown with a stop are from those sources and from the creator. We do not store OpenStreetMap data; where we consult it, for an accessibility assessment, we say so on the assessment.
A trail page may carry one or more lines beginning "Checked against". Each names a published source, usually a council page, the date it was read, and the facts that were read against it: a dog off-lead boundary, an accessible toilet's key, a hire arrangement. The line says whether Trail Tree or the trail's creator did the checking. Facts about dogs carry their source and date beside the answer as well.
A check is a reading of a published source on a day. Councils change their rules, and signs on the ground can differ from the page. The date tells you how old our reading is.
Where a Trail Tree team member or the trail's creator has walked a route and recorded the walk, the trail page says so, with the date and any note from the walk. Where no walk is recorded, the page says nothing about walking: it does not claim a walk, and it does not claim the trail is untested.
An accessibility claim on Trail Tree comes only from the eight-question assessment on the trail, never from a tag. The assessment records step-free access, surface, gradient, path width, kerb ramps, accessible toilets, accessible parking and seating, and who answered: the trail's creator, a Trail Tree administrator, or an accredited partner organisation. A trail without an assessment shows "Accessibility: not assessed".
Every trail page has a Report tool in its tools menu. Use it for a closed path, a wrong fact, a photo concern or anything else. We acknowledge reports within five business days. Reports are read by Trail Tree and are not shown publicly. For anything else, contact us.
25 October 2026.